2018 Contributors

Kristina currently works as a Director of Strategy & Innovation at Hamburg's agency Sinnerschrader where she focuses on building and facilitating user-centric digital products, services & organisational design.

After starting off her career in trend research, where she analyzed global and local cultural behavioral shifts, she decided to put her thoughts into more concrete practice and became an innovation consultant.

She strongly trusts in good teams and collective genius and is passionate for designing and facilitating creative environments.

Her free time circles around doing sports, food and exploring new culinary places in town and spending quality time at the seaside with her patchwork family

Michael Sillus is leading the ProtoSpace in Hamburg – and part of a network of innovation labs at Airbus. He studied Business Administration with focus on Innovation and Technology Management in Lüneburg and partly Gothenburg. He started his career at Ericsson Telecommunications and a TrustCenter for Digital Signatures and is since 15 years now with Airbus. He is passionate about new ways of working and changing mindsets and drives innovation projects from ideation to prototyping.

Nina Hälker is a research associate at the CityScienceLab at HafenCity University Hamburg. The Lab, a cooperation with the MIT Media Lab, focuses on the impact of digitization on cities.

Besides her research, Nina is involved in the recently-founded association „Connected Cities e.V.“, an transatlantic initiative which aims at improving dialogue and civil society networks between Germany and the U.S.

Karin works as a UX designer, striving to create great work flows and pleasing digital experiences. She is ever curious about peoples behaviour, especially when there is a chance to make them more environmentally friendly.

NÜWIEL develops electric transportation solutions for urban areas. Its first product is an electric cargo trailer for package delivery in last mile logistics. NÜWIEL was in the Top 10 qualified for the first IKEA Bootcamp in Älmhult with 1.200 worldwide applications. Natalia studied engineering in Hamburg University of Technology and holds an MBA from a private business school from Hamburg, NIT.

Holger graduated with an engineering degree in media technology. Since 2013 he has been working in the Conscious City Lab at the Architecture Department of the Technical University of Berlin with Prof. Bunschoten. Since the beginning of 2017, he has been part of the CityScope team at CityScienceLab at the HafenCity University with Prof. Gesa Ziemer and Prof. Jörg Rainer Noennig. Here he is involved in the development of data-driven negotiation themes, knowledge engineering and AI research to support education, participation and collaboration in various disciplines. In the project DIPAS "Digital Participation System" he works on the citizen feedback text analysis components of and internal knowledge management. His PhD research focuses on semantics extraction and prototypes mapping of spatial and social phenomena.

I work as a teacher in Swedish and history, and both languages and history are two of my greatest interests in life. Before I became a teacher I worked as a tourist guide and in that line of work I realized that I wanted to continue to work both with history and especially with people.

I love to challenge myself and others to develop as individuals, and then be able to open themselves up for new perspectives on things. For me, it is important that the school doesn’t become an isolated and obsolete place that is cut off from reality. Instead the school should be a meeting place where young people are coming in contact with reality in different forms, not just from the curriculum but from the world outside of the school.

Fanny work as at the innovation platform Media Evolution in the Southern Sweden. On daily basis she working with communication and coordinating projects and activities for their community. A community that wants to develop together in the age on digital transformation. She love to use her creative side to design new ways of concept and formats for knowledge sharing, collaborations and innovative activities.

Media Evolution is a innovation/development platform and a community for the digital businesses that organize "The Conference" and runs the meeting place and co-working space Media Evolution City in Malmö. The member base consists of 400 companies, organizations, universities, regions and cities in the southern part of Sweden. The community comes from various industries that want to develop with those working in the digital front. Annually Media Evolution create meeting places for 25 000 participants in forums for seminars, workshops, talks, conferences as well as platforms for articles and knowledge sharing.

Nick is a designer and business economist by training, a project manager by trade, and a creator and maker by heart. She loves Margaret Atwood novels, unconventional vegan food, and to interest people in political participation. Her projects include Save Democracy and Zweimeilenladen.

In his current position at Hamburg Marketing GmbH, Sascha develops and drives both national and international marketing initiatives to broaden the region’s appeal for individuals and businesses within and outside the region and to help people identify with it more closely.

Sascha serves as a primary point of contact and professional adviser for Hamburg's brand communication as a location for innovation. He is responsible for the website www.future.hamburg. The digital platform is the online point of contact to learn about the innovation landscape of the metropolitan region of Hamburg, get inspired and enable local networking opportunities.

He also manages regional and external partner projects and events that promote Hamburg, working closely with relevant partners.

His professional background includes more than twelve years experience in the international sales and marketing industry. Most recently, he was a project manager at SMA Solar Technology AG, a worldwide market and technology leader for intelligent energy management. He also draws from several years’ experience working at advertising agencies.

Franziska has worked in Hamburg as a business and innovation strategist for over ten years with a focus on retail, med-tec, finance, media, FMCG and NGOs.

Franziska launched her career in Hamburg’s ad agency scene as a strategic planner to evolve from communication strategy, into brand strategy and finally business strategy and innovation. She co-founded her first innovation consultancy in 2012, a fin-tech start-up in 2015 and her current innovation lab with a focus on digital products and services in 2016. This lab, X-O Projects, helps blue chip and mid-sized businesses to accelerate their innovation processes with the help of Design Thinking and Design Sprints as well as corporate Hackathon experiences.

Niels is a designer with over 15 years of experience in brand creation, management and implementation. Together with his team he helps to create and redesign businesses, brands, products and services to form identities. He is fascinated by great ideas, outstanding concepts and visionary design that meets clients’ needs in bringing businesses to life. Niels gets inspired by spending time with his two little kids – or just by being out on the water sailing.

Dorit works as Head of UX at Cornelsen Educational Publishers, one of the leading providers of educational media in the German-speaking world. She and her team work within product teams throughout the whole development process, from problem identification to ideation over to production. Her previous experiences include positions at Xing as Design Team Lead Mobile and at Nokia/HERE as Team Lead User Research. Dorit strives for really good quality of work and is motivated by working with passionate people.

Jenny works as a freelance User Experience and Product Strategist. With her background in user research she is still passionate about finding the true stories and things that really matter in listening to others. She also loves creative team work, design sprints, sustainable products and processes as well as being in nature.

Karin spends her days working with clients to help them to create successful product and brand innovations. By working in the borderlands between consumer needs and business goals Karin tries to ensure that both perspectives are successfully connected and that on the journey from first ideas until final product realisation and communication „no wrong exit“ is taken.

Being an always curious multi-disciplinarist she worked as a researcher, brand consultant, university lecturer and trainer, travels the world whenever there is time. Her passion circles around "strategy meets creativity" and "story-telling with data".

Before co-founding Facts and Stories, Karin worked for 8 years for Beiersdorf as a business and brand strategist for the brand NIVEA and started her working live in TechCompanies like Microsoft and AOL.

Martin is a concept and business developer who previously worked at Media Evolution and served as the curator for The Conference. His background in the music industry, where he organized festivals and clubs as well ran the record label Songs I Wish I Had Written.

He studied communication design in Dortmund and began his career in Hamburg with an internship at EIGA Design. As a design director for the Peter Schmidt Group in Hamburg, Sven is responsible for leading a ten-person team. Supporting start-ups, global brands in the FMCG category, Sports and Gaming. To liven up the agencies daily routine, he founded an internal experimental platform called LAB72.

When not at work you can find Sven in the countryside of Hamburg, where he personally renovated an old farm house with his girlfriend. He also shreds and sings in a post hardcore band, tries to get better at gaming and is passionate about tinkering with bicycles.

Alexander is an artist, designer and consultant living and loving Hamburg. He is best known for his work for digital studios such as Hi-Res! London and Hamburg, as well as developing the mobile studio Swipe as Creative Director for the past five years.

Alexanders interests range from motorsports to bass music, to streetwear, but first and foremost to creating immersive experiences at the intersection of art and technology. Right about now, he is about to found his very own company trying to improve the interfaces of algorithm-driven software and IoT. Once a week he is teaching Interaction Design at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.